ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on girls’ use of indirect aggression to bully other girls and manipulate peer relationships, such as spreading false rumours about others and excluding peers from the group. Drawing on recent qualitative research with pre-adolescent girls, this chapter provides a succinct and accessible overview of the phenomenon of bullying among girls. Using key research fi ndings and perspectives from girls themselves, this chapter explores the complex nature of girls’ bullying in terms of their friendships, their emerging sexual identities and the social power structures prevalent within schools. The chapter demonstrates that, despite their pre-adolescence, girls’ friendships are subject to a sexualised and gendered discourse of indirect aggression, and it provides examples of best practice to explore a range of effective interventions that can be used to address girls’ bullying both within the school context and within other youth settings.
